Echo of Pathfinder: An Asa Shirogane Story

Two thousand years from now, the Milky Way Council charters V.A.S.T.-the Vessel & Archive Salvage Taskforce to do what no one else will: map the unknown and recover what history lost. They don’t keep what they find-every black box, data core, and relic transfers into Council Custody-because truth only matters if it survives the handoff.

Asa Shirogane, V.A.S.T.’s newest Field Recovery Specialist, is on loan from Recon and assigned her first case: a century-missing first-generation colony ship, Pathfinder’s Dawn, has begun transmitting again from an unmapped corridor known as Echo Lane.

With the stealth-black Shadow Blossom and a crew that’s equal parts trouble and family-Captain Rook Mercer, sarcastic Vulpian pilot Sable ＂Slip＂ Ruun, engineer ＂Stitch＂ Park, Sgt. Mara Knox, and Dr. Serrin of the Shardline-Asa follows the signal into a maze of ＂routine inspections,＂ corrupted ledgers, and sealed custody systems that feel less like safety and more like ownership.

The deeper they dig, the clearer it becomes: someone is using procedure as a weapon, moving ＂legal＂ cargo through hidden lanes-and some of that cargo is still alive.

When the trail leads to an ageless aristocrat of the Obsidian Court who sees humans as brief inconveniences, Asa is forced to choose between completing the mission... and doing what’s right.

She won’t leave them behind.

Recover the Lost. Map the Unknown.